3D Printed Fashion - Plastirobes And Transdresses

Her inspiration was Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” that she modified to look like a 3D picture. Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which resulted in the overthrow of King Charles Xth of France.

Together with the TechFactoryPlus and XLN teams, she experimented with different printers and materials. Most of the materials she used at the beginning were hard, rigid and frail which is quite the opposite of a “real” textile.

However, soon she found a new material called FilaFlex that is strong, yet very flexible. Using FilaFlex and the Witbox printer, she was able to fulfill her dream and print her fashion collection.

These light, airy creations that seem to change as the models move, and appear different close up as opposed to far away remind me of fashions described by Philip K. Dick and Larry Niven/Stephen Barnes.

In his terrifying 1954 story Sales Pitch, Dick describes the plastirobe:

She leaped to her feet. "Let's go out tonight and celebrate. Okay?" Her slim fingers fumbled at the zipper of her shorts. "I'll put on my new plastirobe, the one I've never had nerve enough to wear."

Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she hurried into the bedroom. ""You know the one I mean? When you're up close it's translucent but as you get farther off it becomes more and more sheer until -"

"I know the one," Morris said wearily. "I've seen them advertised on my way home from work..."

But the one I'm really struck by is this idea from Niven and Barnes' 1992 novel The California Voodoo Game:

... a transdress shop offered over three thousand designs per processor. Just plug it into the transparent dresses and dial a new fashion every day! He heard stories of women whose batteries had died while they were walking along the street...
(Read more about the transdress)